


Firsts

by AgapantoBlu



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: AFTG Winter Exchange 2017, Just a tiny bit of Angst but that's Canon's fault, M/M, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-10
Updated: 2017-12-10
Packaged: 2019-02-13 00:13:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12971481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgapantoBlu/pseuds/AgapantoBlu
Summary: The first time Nicky kisses Erik, it’s their third kiss, it’s on Christmas Eve, under a mistletoe twig, and he’s crying.He’s crying because Erik’s sister put the mistletoe on the kitchen door and tricked them into walking under it together; because Erik is smiling so bright with all the house lights turning his curls gold and his eyes emerald; because somewhere Erik’s mother is chastising her daughter not to bother them and Erik’s father is laughing boisterously and everybody is absolutely okay with this.A few of Nicky's firsts through his life.[This is for Courtney ( @bookishplays ) for the @aftgexchange!]





	Firsts

The first time Nicky kisses Erik, it’s their third kiss, it’s on Christmas Eve, under a mistletoe twig, and he’s crying.

He’s crying because Erik’s sister put the mistletoe on the kitchen door and tricked them into walking under it together; because Erik is smiling so bright with all the house lights turning his curls gold and his eyes emerald; because somewhere Erik’s mother is chastising her daughter not to bother them and Erik’s father is laughing boisterously and everybody is absolutely okay with this.

He’s crying because it’s nine months of this and then Hell to pay once again.

Erik brushes a hand from his forehead to the bend of his jaw as they pull apart, and twirl a lock of brown hair around his pointing finger as he all but beams. “You’re safe here,” he says, and Nicky wonders if he can read the mind or he’s just that much of an open book since he’s allowed himself to finally  _feel_  again.

“Mmh-mh,” is not enough of an answer so he buries his face in Erik’s neck and blows a raspberry there. Erik squeals and jumps, ticklish.

“Well, that was cute as fuck.”

When Nicky turns, Lydia is grinning at them. She has five more twigs of mistletoe in her arms and a devilish light in her eyes. Erik dares her, she takes off on her mission to booby-trap the house, and Nicky has a feeling he’ll spend the whole day kissing and getting kissed. 

Which is, really, not so bad, so he dries his tears with the back of his wrist and then goes to hold Erik’s hand.

 

 

The first time Nicky stands up to his father is on aunt Tilda’s funeral. Leaving for Germany had been a quiet and meek affair, refusing to meet his looks of disapproval and feeling his harsh words on his back like lashes, but this is different.

This is Luther staking a claim to the twins while calling them ‘the bastard sons of a lost sister’ at the same time, it’s him making threats of discipline and structures for the correction of their unruly behaviors while claiming he’s their only chance at a roof above their heads. This is Nicky locked up in his room with a handful of pills ready to pass his lips and two other boys lined up outside to do just the same.

He slams the door when he’s dragged his father inside. He yells, Luther doesn’t, but it’s no match for who has more poison to his side. Maria doesn’t want two teenagers like them in her house, she’s never liked Aaron anyway, so it’s not a long fight. Luther surrenders with a laughter.

“You’ll drag them both to Hell with you”, he says as Nicky signs the last of the guardianship papers. “When it happens, I don’t want any of you to come and beg me for help.”

Nicky doesn’t tell him there’s no way that’s ever going to happen, but he thinks it for a moment.

Aaron and Andrew don’t have much stuff either. Nicky mentally makes a list of what to get them and how much it may cost and suppresses the consequent shiver. Money’s going to be tight for a while, but he can do it, he promises.

He calls Erik when he gets home. He expects disappointment, rage, a break up, but Erik is not even surprised. “ _They’re your family, Nicky,_ ” he says, voice gone soft with adoration and melancholy. “ _You’d always cry blood and burn to ashes, for your family._ ”

“You’re my family too,” he says, because it’s truer than anything else. Erik is more family to him than this unknown Andrew, after all.

“ _Not until I put a ring on you,_ ” Erik jokes, and there’s a tilt in his voice, like he’s singing, that makes Nicky wonder if he checked his pronunciation with Beyoncé. It would be quite an Erik thing to do, and it makes his heart swell and a laughter break through his lips.

“Don’t wait too long,” he says. “I’m a fucking catch.”

They’re going to wait, though. One year at best, until the twins turn eighteen and graduate. At worst, it’s hard to say. Nicky has seen Andrew and Aaron around each other, the fractures visible from a ten miles distance. He knows himself, he knows he won’t go home until he’s fixed it.

Still. “ _Give me time to find something appropriate,_ ” Erik laughs gently. “ _It’s hard to find a jewel for the sun himself._ ”

“Gross. You’re so cheesy, Mr Klose.”

“ _I try my best._ ”

They laugh. Laugh, laugh, laugh, until somehow Nicky is crying and Erik is whispering and the twins are just next door.

Trying their best. Is there anything else to do?

 

 

The first time Nicky doesn’t answer Erik’s call, is after Thanksgiving, second year at Palmetto, with the world crushing down all around him. He’s not sure if he should go to the hospital with Andrew or go to the police station with Aaron and the phone ringing endlessly in his head is making his brain implode.

He presses the red button. He pukes in a trashcan.

He calls back hours later, he doesn’t know how to start explaining and the frantic, worried voice that pours over the speaker shouldn’t be half as soothing as it is. 

He was worried, somehow, that Erik would be mad at him for trying to pick up the pieces of his relationship with his mom. That’s the kind of thing that may make him angry, furious, because it makes him scared. Scared for Nicky and of his pain. But the end of the night was a nightmare too big for his rage and Erik curses, but his voice his wet and he keeps asking about the twins, and promising everything will be okay, and Nicky wants to believe him.

He really wants to.

“Matt’s mom got a lawyer and bailed Aaron out,” he says instead. “I don’t know how I’m going to pay him back for this. I don’t—“ It’s not a matter of money, though he wouldn’t manage to pay the bill if he worked relentlessly for fifteen years. It’s that Aaron is sitting in the room next to his, and Nicky got to see him and to touch his arm and to know he was there, if nothing else. The price for that is too big for him to even fathom.

“ _The Foxes—_ “ Erik stops. It’s not the pause that he used to do back in the first year, when he was trying to translate mentally from German to American. Nicky wonders what kind of words would be so stupid as to try to escape such a beautiful person. “ _The Foxes are family._ ” Nicky blinks. Erik goes on. “ _I know, because you tell me. The Foxes are family; they closed their ranks for Kevin and Neil, they will for Andrew and Aaron too._ ”

Sometimes, Nicky feels like the two of them are on different planes of existence. Erik will never understand completely the brokenness of the Foxes, the different way they look at the Monsters, at Andrew; he will never understand how they could turn their backs on such a situation, but Nicky is far too wary of everyone right now. His own family did this, he himself failed his cousins. How can he expect someone else to fix it up?

“We’ll see,” he says.

 

 

The first time Andrew talk to Nicky after he comes back, he asks about his people. Nicky relays everything dutifully about each and every one of the monsters, and he even adds a few about coach and Renee. Andrew doesn’t appear delighted by that, but neither he looks annoyed.

He looks void, and nothing else.

Nicky knows when he’s being dismissed, which usually with Andrew happens with a flicker of the cigarette burning in his hand. This time, he adds, “send Neil.”

This time, when Nicky turns and moves to leave, Andrew’s voice carries after him. “Call Erik if you want to mope.”

It’s rough and harsh and all that, but it’s more than Nicky had been expecting. It’s Andrew’s own brand of taking care of his own. A possible translation would be “ _you have nothing to tell me, I don’t want your apologies, call Erik because we both know you fucking want to_ ”. Or maybe that’s all Nicky’s wishful thinking.

He sends Neil.

 

 

The first time Nicky hears an Exy-related praise from Kevin to him it’s when he and the twins graduate. It’s wrapped up in some rude complaint about how he wasted five years turning him into a decent back-liner just to have Nicky throw everything away to run to Germany and get some boring ass job there. But, hey, it’s Kevin. Nicky will take what he can.

Kevin said he came over for Wymack, nobody believes him. He looks at Andrew anxiously and Nicky realizes his cousin hasn’t told him about the Chicago team he signed with just the previous week. The little shit.

Neil looks nauseous. Nicky shoulder-bumps him. “You two are going to be okay,” he whispers, once he’s sure Andrew is too busy making Kevin sweat blood over whether or not he’ll go pro to hear them. “Erik and I made it with nine thousands miles and six years; you two can do one year in driving distance.”

Neil elbows him in the side, but he looks more relaxed from then on.

Aaron is looking constipated as he suffers through whatever new torture Katelyn’s parents have thought up, this time including several pictures, but his hand is laced with hers so maybe he’s not so bad off.

Kevin is red with rage when Andrew leaves him to come back to Neil. He arches a brow at whichever expression his boyfriend is making, but Neil distracts him by lifting and showing his bag. “I’m all packed up.”

Nicky hums. “Columbia?” He’s not going to sell that house anytime soon. No way.

Neil nods at him. “A week or something, we’ll see. We may take off for a car trip before Andrew has to move for practice.”

“So you  _did_  sign with someone!”

Andrew blatantly ignores Kevin to look at Nicky. He seems to be taking him in wholly and Nicky has long since learnt that keeping his mouth shut is in his own best interests when so happens. A minute later, Andrew’s eyes run along the crowd and stop on someone else. When Nicky turns, he catches Erik chatting away with Abby.

“Oh, our flight is in three hours,” he says, even though, really, he’s been talking about it for weeks. He’s not sure the twins listened at all, to be honest, but who knows? “I’m going to get him and my bag and then we can, uh, leave.”

Leave. Permanently. 

Well, no, not completely, he’s obviously going to come back to visit so there’s that.

Even though maybe the twins won’t want him to come? He’s always been a bit too loud and chatty for them, so maybe they will be glad to get a break, and—

“We leave in fifteen.”

Nicky blinks. Andrew just lights a cigarette and blows smoke in Kevin’s direction when he looks about ready to start a rant about professional athletes and unhealthy vices. Neil elbows him again.

Nicky doesn’t ask, he just sprints toward Erik and drags him to collect their bags from the dorm as he absentmindedly calls their Uber off.

Andrew drives them  _recklessly_  to the airport and Nicky is just all the more surprised when he just sticks around until boarding time. It’s a surreal experience.

As they finally take their seats, Erik wraps an arm around Nicky’s shoulders, uncaring of anybody else, and kisses his temple. “Neil and I had a good chat,” he says, and Nicky looks at him with a gaze that is still as confused as he feels. “We made a temporary list of all the places he and Andrew will want to hit when they come over after his graduation. Though we’ll have to check out more ice-cream parlors before that happens, apparently.”

Nicky kinds of short-circuites at that. He just slumps against Erik and snuggles his face in his neck and maybe, just maybe, cries a little.

It’s like whichever weight settled on his shoulders when he was twenty just lifted. He’s coming home.

 

 

The first time Nicky gets his whole family together in Germany, it’s for his marriage. To be fair, it’s just the second biggest event after his first Christmas there. He and Erik waited long enough, so they chose to waste no more time.

Neil looks at him chugging down vodka on his bachelor’s party and even Kevin looks impressed at how fast he’s going. “I thought you would be happy to get married.”

Matt laughs. “Yeah, you’re basically already a married guy with two adult children, I dunno what you are stressing over.”

Erik’s perfection, for one. How fucking surreal this whole shit is. How he took a plane to escape his bigoted family, his own suicidal tendencies and a traumatic experience that he still has nightmares over, and ended up finding the love of his life and moving country. Like, what the fuck, that’s not shit that happens in real life, okay? It’s book’s material, fuck it.

He must have spoken out loud because everyone suddenly looks at him and seems a bit sobered up.

“Art imitates life,” Kevin comments, obstinately staring at the bottom of his cup as if doing so he could hide the redness of his ears. “Books have to get the inspiration from somewhere.”

“Look, Nicky, you have the Queen’s blessing,” Andrew pipes in from the corner of the couch, head resting on his fist and Neil sitting real close. Aaron snorts at the comment and downs another shot as an excuse to take the vodka away from his cousin.

Nicky hums, lays his head on the table and wonders if he’s going to wake up and find out it was all a dream after all.

Neil hits him in the back of his head. “Not a dream, Nicky. Just go to sleep.”

He does.

 

 

The first time Nicky gets married, it’s also the last. 

Erik vows to love him and Nicky cries; he says his own vows through tears and sobs and he side-eyes money exchanging hands between the old Foxes. He later finds out nobody bet he wouldn’t cry, it was just a matter of how soon. 

Allison gets spectacularly drunk and retells every single embarrassing moment of Nicky she has memory of, taking full advantage of her role as best man of his — and fuck gender roles some more —. Renee gets him to slow dance with her and kisses him and Erik both on the forehead. Wymack hugs him gruffly, claims he’s not crying and then stomps to the open bar with a delighted Abby. Neil and Andrew sneak out on the balcony of the location at some point, and Nicky watches them for a while with a little smile on his lips; then he checks Aaron and Katelyn talking quietly at their table.

Dan hugs him tight and whispers, “How does it feel to be the first Fox to get married?”

Nicky looks at Erik dancing with Matt - together the hugest amount of uncoordinated limbs he’s ever seen stumble around a hall - and holds her a bit tighter.

“Happy,” he says.

Someone laughs. It may even be him.


End file.
